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Bible preaching from the pulpit of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville, South Carolina
We're going to continue in our study in the Psalms. Tonight, of course, we're in Psalm 54.
And I'll read the Psalm to begin. And then tonight we're just going to look at two verses. We're
going to drill down into just two verses in the Psalms. Sometimes we do that instead of covering
the whole Psalm. So that's what we'll do tonight. Verse chapter 54, Psalm 54, the subtitle says,
To the chief musician upon Neganoth must kill a Psalm of David when the Zephimes
came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us? Verse 1,
They have not set God before them. Say la. Behold, God is mine helper. The Lord is with them
that uphold my soul. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies. Cut them off in thy truth.
I will freely sacrifice unto thee. I will praise thy name, O Lord, for it is good.
For he hath delivered me out of all trouble, and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.
Would you pray with me tonight? Our Father, thank you again for the opportunity to meet together as
the people of God. And thank you for those that are able to be here, but also those that are
listening in that aren't able to come but are still wanting to hear the word. And Lord, I think of
the people in our church that are suffering who are the bodies and the illnesses that are going
around and just different ailments and such. Brother Steve and Wendy and Walter and brother
Ben and brother Ari. And I think of Nathaniel. Lord, we give you thanks for protecting him
and helping him and his family and his parents. And Lord, we pray for your blessing to be upon
Joanna and upon Anna as they carry babies. Lord, we pray for those others among us who are
sick and just dealing with trouble in various ways. God, have mercy on our church and bring us all
back to health and strength. We pray especially for brother Steve as he is in the hospital right
now in Greer. We pray, Lord, that your mercy would just be poured out upon him and that you would so
direct those who are taking care of him to allow him to go into a rehab facility that would help
him to get better quickly. And so please provide. Lord, we pray that you would be our help in these
things. Lord, we just pray that you would continue to bless us and protect us. Lord, keep us well.
And for those that are ill, raise them up. Lord, and as we look in your word tonight, I pray that
you would guide us in our study of your word. And I pray that you would be our teacher and that we
would go away from this place tonight having been encouraged by what you have said in your word. In
Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So in Psalm 54, the two verses I want to look at
are verses four and five. Verse four says this, Behold, God is mine helper. The Lord is with them
that uphold my soul. He shall reward evil unto my enemies. Cut them off in thy truth. And I want to
just, I have just two parts primarily, and I want to meditate just a little bit on this idea that
God is our helper. God is our helper. Now what's interesting is, you know, normally or maybe
rationally we would think of ourselves as people that help God. In other words, God has something
for us to do and we participate in his mission and his work and we could say we're a helper of
God. But what this says is that the Lord comes to our assistance. The Lord comes to our aid.
And just three quick things I want to share with you, just a way to meditate upon what it
means that God is our helper. The first thing I want you to see is this, that when the Lord says
this word helper means that we do not stand alone. We do not stand alone. Now in this life, as we've
seen in our church, as you know in your own personal life, different things you must face.
You know, we have ladies that are in our church that in a few months are going to be going through
childbirth. And you know, knowing from personal experience that is not any fun. Okay, nobody got
the joke at all. Having observed personally, childbirth is no fun. But here's the thing to
remember, that the Lord is your helper in that. You know, when you're going through sickness,
if there's sickness or you have surgery or you have financial trouble or you have relationship
trouble, whatever the case is, whatever the case is, no believer ever deals with those things alone.
That's what you have to remember is the Lord does not allow us to stand alone. He says,
he maybe doesn't say it directly in these terms, but it's definitely implied in this. He says,
I am your help. I am your help. Now we must recognize our need for help and we must call
upon God. And that's one of our, that's one of the hindrances that we have. Oftentimes our tendency
is instead of calling upon God and recognizing God as our help, we call upon some other source
of help. But the Lord reminds us, you know, this verse, Psalm 60 verse 11, also repeated in Psalm
108 verse 12 says this, give us help from trouble for vain is the help of man. Vain is the help of
man. You see when you need help, when you're in trouble, when you're suffering, when you're down,
when things are hard and you don't know what to do and you're at your wits end or whatever the
trouble, whatever the trial, no matter the scale, no matter the severity or seriousness,
no matter the complexity, none of that matters. God is your helper. And so we must instinctively
and intuitively turn to him for our help because he tells us, he says, I'm your helper. You do not
stand alone. Listen to this. This is not just me saying this. This is what the scripture bears
out as well. Isaiah 41 verse 10 says this, fear thou not for I am with thee. Be not dismayed for
I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. I will uphold thee with the right hand
of my righteousness. Notice what he says. I will help thee. But in the same verse he says,
I am with thee. You know, that is, did you know that the presence of God with a saint of God
is one of the marks of God's identification of that saint? You do know that? That's how God
separates us from everyone else on earth. That's how he did with Israel is because in the congregation
of Israel was the tabernacle and the manifestation of the glory of God among them. And now we are the
temple of God and God dwells in us. So there's never a time that God is not with you. And because
he is with you, he says, I will strengthen thee. I will help thee. I will uphold thee. Now think
about that word uphold and look at verse number four. It says this, the Lord is with them that
uphold my soul. I'm going to come back to that. But notice he mentions upholding someone in Isaiah
40 verse 41 verse 10. Now in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 6 says this, so that we may boldly say,
the Lord is my helper. Now what is the result of that? What is the result of that fact that the
Lord is my helper? It goes on to say this, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. So the
presence of God means God is our helper. The fact that God is our helper means we have no need to
fear, no need to fear. And then in Psalm 118 verse 6 says this, the Lord is on my side. I will not
fear. What can man do unto me? The Lord taketh my part with them that help me. Therefore shall I see
my desire upon them that hate me. So to the saint, God says, God is on your side. Now you got to
remember, God doesn't side with everybody. God doesn't side with people just because they have
nice thoughts of God. God doesn't side with people because they're wealthy or important or because
they have some sort of position or they're some sort of official of some kind. God doesn't side
with people for those reasons. God is no respecter of persons. God sides with us because we fear him,
because we trust him. And when the Lord, you know, you talk about the faithfulness of a friend,
when you have a friend who is faithful, they are by your side. They will not leave you. They
will be loyal to you to the end. That is what the Lord says of us. He said, the Lord is on my side.
So for that reason, we can say whenever, because God is our helper, no matter what comes to pass
in our life, we do not ever stand alone, ever. God is a very present help in trouble. The second
thing I want you to see about the Lord being the helper is this. The word helper, the fact that God
is our helper means that we must recognize our weakness. Weakness is when you need help.
Weakness is when you need help. A person who is deluded into thinking that they do not need help
is a person who does not recognize God as their helper. And so what the Lord often does with his
people is he brings us into situations that force us to recognize that we need him. That we need him.
And when we recognize that we need him and we acknowledge him as our help and we call out to him
and we call out to him and trust him as our help, he demonstrates by that process, by those means,
that he is our helper. In other words, he uses those difficult opportunities
to provide a circumstance whereby he can come through for us and prove that he is our helper.
Because if it wasn't for those times, we would never know. We know that God is our helper because
he helps and he helps when we're in need. You think of the writer of this Psalms, David,
the Psalm of David in Psalm 54. David, think about David. David is the one that often talks about,
I'll read several passages in the Psalms in just a minute, but David is one who often talks about
God as his helper. But David was not a man who naturally needed help. David was not that weak.
I think sometimes we get these, I don't know if romantic is the right word, maybe romantic
views of figures in the Bible. We get caricatured, cartoonish even, you know, like Noah's Ark. You
know, you have the little boat and the giraffe's head sticking out and you know, you have a sheep
and you have an elephant, you know, and that's, it's a caricature and you have, you lose sight of
what it really is. And I think that's the way we do with biblical figures. We think of Joshua's and
David's and Moses and people like that. And we think we get a wrong impression about them.
David was no wimpy dude. David was not a sissy man. David was a man who knew what it was to have
the blood of his enemy sprayed across his face. David was a man who knew what it meant to
to wield a sword in battle and hear the blood curdling battle cries. He is the one who,
the Bible says, David, that Saul slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.
David was, as a teenager, was the man who took on a lion and a bear and killed them without a sword
or a spear with a staff in his hand. This was, David was a brave and a courageous man from a
human perspective. He's called in 1st Samuel 16 verse 18, he's called a mighty man of valor,
and that was before Goliath. That's before he was even a full-grown man. He was called a mighty man
of valor. So David was no wimp, but yet you see David say repeatedly in the Psalms,
Lord, you're my helper. I need help. He cries out to God and recognizes his weakness.
And this is one problem that sometimes men fall into, maybe more than ladies. I can't, it's not
as easy for me to speak about ladies in this case, but I know men out of pride, out of arrogance,
sometimes won't ask for help, not from God, not from man. And that's not right. God wants us to
acknowledge that we need him because we do. We do. Listen to these Psalms, Psalm 33 20. David says,
our soul waiteth for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. Psalm 40 verse 17, but I am poor and
needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. Thou art my help and my deliverer. Make no tarrying, oh my God.
Psalm 94 verse 17, unless the Lord had been my help, my soul had almost dwelt in silence.
Psalm 115 verse 9, this is what it says, oh Israel, trust thou in the Lord. He is their help and their
shield. Oh house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. Ye that fear the
Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. So being a manly man, being a masculine
man, being a strong man is not exclusive of recognizing that you need God and you are weak
and you need him to be your helper. Those can go together in the same person because even if,
you know, like we read a minute ago, vain is the help of man. What if that man is myself?
It's still vain. It's still vain. We need the Lord to be our helper.
So that's the second one. The word helper reminds us that we must recognize our weakness. We need
his help. The third thing I want you to see is this. God sometimes uses men, people, humans,
as his means to help us. God sometimes uses men, mankind, other people, as his means to help us.
We don't have to go very far into this psalm to see this. Notice verse 4. Now let me pause here.
Those of you that are in the school of scripture, as we've been going through our study of observation,
one of the things we pointed out, we talked about with observation, is to observe comparisons and
contrasts. Here's an example. Verse number 4. Behold, God is mine helper. The Lord is with them that
uphold my soul. Who are those that uphold David's soul? You know who they are? They're people who
help David. They're people who help David. Go on. He shall reward evil unto mine enemies.
Cut them off in thy truth. He mentions, actually mentions enemies three times. He mentions enemies
in verse 3. For strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul. They have not
set God before them. So you have the enemies in verse 3. You have his enemies in verse number 5.
Verse 7 also says, for he had delivered me out of trouble, and mine eye has seen his desire upon
mine enemies. So you have a contrast here. In this psalm, you have David's enemies, this group of
those who do not help David. And then you have his friends, those that uphold his soul. And they're
set opposite. They're contrasted together in the psalm. Now remember the context. If you would,
take a moment and read the subtitle once again. It says this, to the chief musician upon Neganoth,
Moskill the psalm of David, when the Ziphim's came and said to Saul, doth not David hide himself
with us? What are the the Ziphim's doing here? What are they doing? They're betraying David.
They're ratting him out. Now this Ziph, the place Ziph is down. If you look at a map, the Dead Sea
is right here. Jerusalem's right about here. And if you go to southeast from Jerusalem, you go
actually south from Jerusalem toward Hebron, the city of Hebron. And you go southeast from Hebron,
about five miles, you get to a hill. They call it a tell, where the city of Ziph was. And that's
where David was hiding out. There were some trees. He was in a fort. That's where David was hiding out.
And they knew that. And they knew Saul was looking for him. And so the the people that lived in Ziph
ratted him out. They were not his enemies. Or they were not his friends. They were his enemies.
That's the context here. That's the contrast David is drawing here. That's who he has in mind.
David is being hunted by Saul.
And you remember that you remember the history here is that God in 1st Samuel 15,
God has rejected Saul to be king. Now Saul is still the king because the time has not come yet
for Saul to be actually be removed. But God has already rejected him. To God is a done deal.
In the next chapter, 1st Samuel 16, is when God sends Samuel to anoint David to be the king.
David is then anointed to be the king, but he doesn't become the king for some time.
And of course that lead, God doing that with David, anointing him while Saul is still the king,
was the direct cause for why Saul became jealous of David and started hunting him and was looking
for a reason to kill him. So when God sent Samuel to anoint David to be the king, God was revealing
his will to Samuel. He was saying, this is my chosen king, Saul is no more. Now they were in this,
Israel was in this limbo because they have a king that God has rejected and he's still the king.
And they have a new king that God has chosen and that's been made known now. Everybody knows it.
But he's not the king yet. And so what it does is it causes a natural division.
And so what it does is it causes a natural division.
Right? It causes a natural division. Those who sided with Saul became David's enemies.
And those that sided with David became David's friends. And all of that is in the context of
God's will because God has already revealed his will. So you have to keep that in mind.
There were people that held, despite what God's revealing his will with, with, with about Saul
and about anointing David, despite that, there were people that held loyal to Saul in spite of God's
directive. Maybe they had personal interest, maybe they had a desire for position, maybe they had
personal reasons, maybe they were of the tribe of Benjamin like Saul was. Maybe they had loyalties
in that way. We don't know, but they held loyal to Saul. But by holding loyal to Saul, these men
set themselves against the will of God. Now that's important. They supported something that God had
rejected. They supported something that God had rejected. There's several names, if you just want
to write down the names. We won't go to all the passages. It would take far too long, but
these names that appear in the narrative of 1 Samuel and 1 and 2 Samuel, these figures that are
against David, the first one we've already studied in Psalm 52, or yes, Psalm 52, Doeg the Edomite.
Remember when David visited Ahimelech, the priest, and Doeg the Edomite was there? What did Doeg do?
He ratted David out, and he ratted Ahimelech out as well. Even though he knew very well David had
been anointed to be the king. Then you come later to chapter 25 of 1 Samuel, you have Nabal. What's
interesting is, actually I'm going to read that. If you want to go to 1 Samuel chapter 25, this is
an interesting verse here. 1 Samuel 25. This is what Nabal said when David approached him.
I don't know if it's Nabal or Nabal or however you pronounce it, but
Nabal? Maybe it's Nabal. Verse 10 says this, and Nabal answered David's servants and said,
Who is David? And who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break
away every man from his master. Shall I then take my bread and my water and my flesh that I have
killed for my shearers and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be? Would you say Nabal was
an enemy or a friend of David? Definitely an enemy. Why? You notice he mentions Saul, David
breaking away from Saul. There's obviously a loyalty to Saul going on here, but by doing that,
he is setting himself against God's will. It doesn't end well for Nabal. It doesn't end well
for Doeg. Then you have the Zephyites, which are the ones who turned over David and Zeph.
That's, we already looked at them. And then you have in 2 Samuel 2, you have a man in the line of
Saul, one of the sons of Saul, of a concubine named Ishbecheth. And Ishbecheth wanted to take
the place of Saul when Saul died. You remember, it didn't end up well for him. Again, rebellion
against God's will. That's what this is. But that's not all.
Because there were also, go back to the Psalm, Psalm 54, there are also friends of David.
In contrast to this group of enemies that you see in the life of David, enemies who stay loyal to
Saul, thereby rejecting God's will, you have some who still in the reign of Saul, while Saul is still
the king, recognize God's will. And as a result, have an affinity for David. They are David's
helpers. In fact, he mentions them. He says in verse 4, the Lord is with them that uphold my soul.
David had some people helping him. You see that? David had some people helping him.
So when he says, God is my helper, you have to remember that sometimes God uses people to help.
Sometimes, listen, sometimes God will use you to be that help.
Sometimes God will use another to be the help that you need, and God will send his help by means of
one of his people. What do you see in the life? Well, let's look at a few examples. I gave you four
examples of enemies in the life of David that set themselves against God's will. But there were
friends, people like Jonathan. In 1 Samuel 18, Jonathan said,
Thou shalt be king over Israel. His father is the king. He is next in line, yet he recognizes
God's will and decision in the matter, and submits and yields to it, and has a close,
loving relationship with David. You see how he put God's priority before his own interest?
What an awesome picture. You know, Jonathan had a sad end to his life because of his association with
Saul, but Jonathan himself was an upstanding, upright, faithful, and loyal man first to God
and also to David. Jonathan was a help to David, right? Then you have Israel and Judah. I'll just
pass this by. 1 Samuel 18, 16, how they had affinity for each other. They had a relationship with
David. Ahimelech, the priest who was killed, we already covered him in 1 Samuel 21. Then you have
the wife of Nabal. Her name was Abigail. Father's joy means.
Nabal dies, or you remember, Abigail, when Nabal was acting churlish and setting himself against
David and against God's will, Abigail went out and tried to give a peace offering to David so
David wouldn't level the whole house, and it worked. Of course, she later, once Nabal died,
she became David's wife, but here's the thing. She, in fact, if you're already in 1 Samuel,
if you'll look at 1 Samuel 25 again, I want to show you this verse here. 1 Samuel 25, verse 30,
listen to this, this truth. Now Nabal said, hey, there's many guys that are running away from their
masters. What are you doing, David? By doing so, he completely disregarded what God had said about
David being the next king. Abigail does the exact opposite. Verse 30, and it shall come to pass when
the Lord shall have done to my Lord according to all the good that he had spoken concerning thee
and shall have appointed thee ruler over Israel. Abigail, despite her husband, recognizes
what God has, the decision God has made about the king. She is yielded to the will of God.
You know, we could just take a little sidebar here and you could see the difference. You have
a son of Belial, right, a man who's just a devil, Nabal, who is a wicked man married to a godly lady.
Can that exist? Oh yes. That's an example. In fact, both of them, they're a pair. One of them is a
friend of David. One of them is an enemy of David, illustrating in the Bible, in the Bible,
illustrating in one family this characteristic. And then the last one is Amosai. First Chronicles 12
verse 18, Amosai came to David and even though he was, I think, part of the house of Saul,
he came and bowed to David and recognized God's will for David.
So when the Bible says God is my helper, when David says God is my helper, it's not that God helps
without any human intervention at all. No. He often uses people who are in the will of God,
who recognizes, who recognize God's will to be the help that you need. You might be the one who needs
help and you sometimes might be the one who needs to be the help. And so, you know,
but to do that you have to be in the will of God, just like they were. You've got to be doing what
God wants you to do. You've got to be following him, recognizing his direction, close to him.
And if you are, you can be that help. You can be the person that upholds another and is, as it were,
the hands of the Lord, for you are the body of Christ, are you not? The hands of the Lord that
can uphold the soul of some saint that's passing through a difficult time. Let me encourage you to
be that. When you have the ability to be that help, stick your neck out and ask yourself,
how can I help other? How can I help the saints of God who are in need, who are struggling,
who are passing through the furnace of affliction? How can I help them? How can I be God's help
for the Lord in their life? Let's pray together.